Rooftops

When it came to transforming a 1940s bungalow into a glamorous Hollywood Hills residence, the Leighs made it a family affair. Garrison Leigh, along with his wife, Patrice, and sons Zachary and Aaron, who all run the real estate development and design firm Good Form, teamed up to develop and design the home -- but not without occasional differences of opinion. Garrison jokes that he got an earful from his sons after he made an executive decision to acid-wash the vein-cut travertine tile on the first floor.

Los Angeles County-USC Medical Center reopened its rooftop helicopter pad this week, six months after the state-of-the-art facility halted landings because helicopter fumes were leaking into the hospital's ventilation system. The landings, which resumed Tuesday, were cleared only after hospital officials installed more-robust filters over the facility's air intake system at about twice the cost of the original filters.

A new drive-in movie theater is opening atop downtown Los Angeles. On Oct. 28, Electric Dusk Drive-In will debut on the rooftop of a parking garage at the corner of 4th Street and Broadway. The drive-in will project a wide selection of classic films, cult favorites and contemporary blockbusters on a 24 foot by 18 foot screen, complete with carhops taking orders from a snack bar, according to a statement from Electric Dusk Drive-In. Audio from the movie will be transmitted directly to patrons' car radios, but patrons without cars can also watch movies in a designated seating area.

March 21, 1989 | NINA J. EASTON, Arts and entertainment reports from The Times, national and international news services and the nation's press

The Chevy Chase name still appears to guarantee a big opening. Chase's "Fletch Lives" enjoyed the second largest opening of the year so far, behind Tom Hanks' "The 'burbs." "Fletch Lives" grossed $8 million at 1,479 screens, or $5,440 per screen. That's a strong showing, considering this is a a slow time of year for the movie business. It's also slightly better than "Fletch" did when it opened in spring, 1985.

Warm temperatures and light winds helped fan a car fire on the Garden Grove Freeway that quickly spread to dry brush and ignited several rooftops in a residential neighborhood, fire officials said Thursday. "The potential for a very serious fire was tremendous," Garden Grove Fire Department Battalion Chief Vincent Bonacker said. "It was a warm day and the neighborhood had a lot of wooden shake roofs." Firefighters responded about 4 p.m.

Whatever their image as enemies of promise and even killers, critics do have finer feelings. They often find themselves rooting for those orphan, underdog films that have more virtue than commercial viability. It looks as if "Rooftops" will join that small company of films that you wish--for a variety of reasons--would do better.

The screenplay for "Falling Down" was a reaction to a lot of things. It is difficult to be specific about interior motivations, especially if they are buried back at the beginning of a long process of bringing clarity to a mental soup concocted of the past and present, the personal and public. What follows are a few of the images and thoughts that assailed me at the beginning and that I still find relevant, now that the journey is over.

Julie Milligan is still unsure how it all happened. One day she's a Los Angeles family law attorney, the next she's created an award-winning landscape on a Santa Monica rooftop. Even stranger still, months later she finds herself waist-deep in Hawaiian earth, digging trenches for a 14-acre garden in Kauai. "Every day I ask myself, how did I go from a successful divorce lawyer to knowing 80 varieties of palm trees?" said the blond, slightly built Milligan as she sat in her garden recently.

Georgia McGinnis of Arleta couldn't help feeding the bright blue peacock that took up residence on the roof of her Vena Street guest home. "I couldn't let him go without food and water, as hot as it was," the 73-year-old woman said. "I'm not that kind of person." Apparently, the bird enjoyed the diet of pet food, wild bird seed and lettuce, because it stayed there for a week, McGinnis said, until the dog next door began tearing up flower beds in a frenzy to get at the bird.

Time and again, the quest to build a convention center resurfaces as Ventura's most elusive dream. Now, Councilman Steve Bennett is resurrecting an old idea: to transform the top floor of the beachfront Holiday Inn parking structure into a convention center. On Monday night, the City Council agreed to have city staff look at how much a feasibility study might cost. But Councilman Jim Monahan said that over the years, he has seen such proposals come and go.